


Forgive me, Father

by fardareismai



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Masturbation, Priest AU, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 09:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3564968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>O, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you. I detest all my sins because of your just punishment, but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all-good and deserving of all my love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgive me, Father

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allegoricalrose (SilentStars)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/gifts).



> This is the first of the prompts for my 500 follower fic giveaway on Tumblr. Allegoricalrose requested the following:
> 
> Priest!Ten and his angsty/UST-y growing love for a certain blonde parishioner. (AU or non-AU)
> 
> Teach her to ask me for angst...

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned...”

 

Ian jumped slightly.  He had been nearly nodding off as his hour in the dark of the confessional, waiting to be sought out came to a close.  The young woman who had just begun was the first person who had interrupted his solace.

 

His teachers at seminary would have told him to take the time to meditate and commune with God, but Ian had always done that better on his feet.  He’d never been able to kneel to say his nightly prayers as a child, but had paced his bedroom, speaking to the Almighty like a friend.  Like a confidant.

 

It was why he’d chosen to enter the priesthood- because when no one else on the entire stupid planet would listen to his rambling, babbling, argumentative talk, God had done so.  It had seemed only right, then, that he would espouse the love of his only friend to anyone who would listen.

 

“It has been… er… well, more than a year since my last confession.  How close do I have to be, Father?”

 

Ian smiled slightly.  The voice on the other side of the screen was young, female, and just a bit nervous.

 

“Well,” he said, holding the vowel out a bit longer than strictly necessary and imagining a smile and a slight relaxation from the other side of the screen, “what are we talking about here?  Ten years?”

 

“Oh no, not that long.  Probably two Christmases past.  I can’t think of a more recent time.”

 

She was smiling, Ian thought.  Good.

 

“It’s nearly Easter now.  Let’s call it 18 months to be safe.”

 

“Okay, thanks Father.  Then it’s been 18 months since my last confession.”

 

Ian blessed her and welcomed her to go on.

 

“Well, I supposed I’ve lied quite a lot.  Mostly to my mum when she asks where I am for the evening, or to my teachers when I haven’t done my work for classes.  I’ve smoked with my mate Shireen behind the school a couple of times.  I don’t much like it, honestly, but Shireen says that it makes us look older so I do it.  We sometimes sneak into the pub as well.  That goes back to the lying because I usually tell my mum we’re at the library when we do that.  Shireen’s pulled a few guys that way.  I haven’t yet.  Guess you’ll know when I do, eh?”

 

There was nothing unusual about her litany of sins- some people came to him with an itemized list, and some, like the girl on the other side of the screen in the dark today, told him stories.  He liked the stories better because it made the people more real, but there was something about this girl’s list of minor sins and foibles that made Ian frown.

 

“Why don’t you do your schoolwork?” he asked.

 

“What’s that?”  She sounded confused.  “Oh, well… it’s pretty boring, I guess and, well… I’m just some kid from the Estates, you know?  Not like school is going to do me any good anyway, is it?  Just going to end up in some dead-end job in a department store, married to some bum with a couple of screaming brats that I can barely keep in shoes, right?  There’s not much else out there for a girl like me unless I want to start turning tricks.”

 

As disturbing as Ian found her words, it was the tone that made Ian open his mouth with a list of objections as long as his (very long and spindly) arm.  That sense of matter-of-factness with the world and its limitation.

 

“Now you listen here.  There is no ‘just’ about you.  There is no law of men or God or the universe that says that because you live on the Estates now that you have to end up as a cliché!  You can be anyone, do you understand me?  I think God has great things in mind for you.  Why squander all of that on… pub trips and cigarettes and… everything?”

 

There was silence for a long time.  Ian could hear her breathing, but she didn’t say anything, and he began to fear that he had offended her.  It really wasn’t his job to condemn or to advise, not in his role as confessor, but she seemed so… young to have such a cynical view of her own future.  Young people should believe that their future was limitless.

 

Finally she spoke again.

 

“Maybe, Father, but it’s different out there.  Maybe God speaks to you, but he doesn’t to the rest of us.  If he’s got great things in mind for me, he’ll have to start showing me what they are.”

 

Ian felt like he had been punched in the gut.  He listened to the remainder of her flat litany of sins (and how he missed the animation of her voice before he’d opened his foolish gob) in silence, and assigned her penance.  Just before she began her act of contrition, however, he interrupted.

 

“Daughter?”

 

“Yes, Father?”

 

“There’s one other thing I want you to do for penance.  I want you to finish and turn in every single piece of classwork that you are assigned this week.”

 

There was another long silence before she said “yes, Father,” and began her quiet act of contrition.

 

Barely five minutes after she left, Father Stewart, the senior priest, came to release Ian from his duties at the confessional.  For the rest of the day, as he wrote his sermon for that Sunday and reviewed lessons for the school, Ian thought about the young woman with the silver voice who had kicked his high horse out from under him.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

 

Ian’s heart fluttered in his chest.  For three weeks he had been scanning the congregation as he led Mass on Sundays, hoping to see the face of the girl from the dark, as though he’d recognize a person he’d never seen.  He’d talked to more of his congregants than he had since he’d first arrived, particularly the young women, hoping to recognize her voice. It had raised a few  eyebrows among the staff, and he’d seen his senior priest open his mouth to chastise Ian a few times, but had closed it and turned away before doing so.

 

It had all been for naught, anyway.  He’d yet to find her.

 

He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he did find her.  He couldn’t acknowledge what was said there in the confessional, couldn’t ask her about her peculiar penance, couldn’t even ask about school as they’d never been formally introduced, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

 

He thought of her constantly, prayed for her almost hourly, and dreamed about her- faceless in the dark.

 

But now, finally, after three weeks, her voice was back.

 

He blessed her, and wondered if she had thought of him as he had thought of her.

 

“Oh good!  It’s you!  I wondered if maybe you had a set time to be here, so I came back at the same time as last time.”

 

“Oh?” he said, his voice coming out on a squeak.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Was there something you wanted to tell me?”

 

“Well I did the penance you told me to.  Three weeks now I’ve done every scrap of my schoolwork.  Shireen thinks I’m going mad but… well…” she hesitated, and took a deep breath.  Ian discovered that he was holding his.

 

“It’s amazing!”

 

Ian breathed in relief.

 

“I’m still no great shakes at maths or physics or anything but… literature!  We’ve been studying Dickens and I read a bunch of his short stories and they’re…”

 

“Brilliant?” Ian asked.  He wanted to ask if she’d read _The Signalman_ , which was his favourite, but it was inappropriate for the confessional.

 

“Completely.  I went back and read _Great Expectations_ , which we worked on earlier in the year, but I skipped.  I’m not finished quite yet, but it’s wonderful.”

 

“I’m so glad, my child.”

 

And he was.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

 

He was quite certain by now that she wasn’t a member of his own flock, but still she came regularly when he sat in the dark to take confession.  He wondered sometimes if she ever confessed to Father Stewart or another priest in town.  He couldn’t ask- not his senior priest nor her- but he wondered.

 

He hoped she didn’t.  He hoped that he was the only one who got this intimacy with her.  The small sins of her everyday life were told only to him- the repository of her confidence.

 

Ian knew it was conceit to think so.  He was merely the human intercessor to the Almighty, and her sins were, ultimately, given to God.

 

But in the dark, with her voice in his ear, he couldn’t help but imagine that it was he she confided in.  He thought of whispers across a pillow and the sorts of confessions that could be accompanied with touches and kisses and soothing words, not formality and penance.

 

“I’ve met a bloke and… well… I suppose I have to confess to lustful thoughts about him.”

 

Ian’s attention was drawn sharply back to reality of his situation.  For months since he’d met her she’d confessed the small sins of her day-to-day life- lying to her mother, smoking with her friends, missing her homework (though that happened less often now), being cruel to her friends, cursing, and other small matters.

 

She had not really mentioned men since their first confession.  Lustful thoughts were hardly an unusual confession, even for a woman as young as she, but he found himself surprised, though he shouldn’t have been.  He also felt oddly betrayed.

 

“He’s older than me, you see.  In a band.  And he’s… well… he’s amazing.  He’s from the Estates, like me, but he’s on his way out and maybe… well, maybe he’d take me with him.”

 

Ian’s ears rang with that statement as he saw her through the rest of her confession and assigned her penance.  She wanted to leave?  With some bloke in a band?

 

And what about him?

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

 

Ian had hoped that she would come that day.  It had been a difficult week- he’d performed two funerals, which were par for the course, though one was for a relatively young man who had been in an accident, and his wife was quite distraught, but he’d also been counseling a couple before they married and their conflicts had finally come to a head and the relationship had dissolved before his eyes the previous day.

 

He was sure that the young woman’s sweetness would help him to feel better.

 

“I’ve committed a sin of… well… of lust.  I went down- I gave- I… I performed oral sex on my boyfriend,” she finally stammered out.

 

Ian felt his stomach drop and, traitorously, the barest of twitches between his legs.

 

The girl continued her confession as Ian’s world seemed to crumble around him.  How had he come to this?

 

He had fallen in love with the voice in the dark.  A girl- she couldn’t be more than 17 or 18- whose face he had never seen.  A girl with a boyfriend.  A life.  A girl who had sex with said boyfriend.

 

 _Even if she felt for you as you feel for her_ , a voice in his head whispered, _you can do nothing about it.  You are committed._

 

As she said her act of contrition, Ian said the words with her.

 

“Oh, my God, I am sorry for having offended you…”

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

 

Ian thought he might throw up.  It had been four months since last he’d heard her voice in the dark.  He’d thought of her, worried for her, prayed for her, and done nothing.

 

The previous night, however, he’d dreamed of her.  A dark dream where a faceless woman put her mouth to his cock, driving him mad.  A dream of shadows as his hands touched smooth thighs, puckered nipples, and the slippery secrets at the centre of her.  A mysterious dream where an unknown form rose over him and took him inside of her with gasps and cries and words of affirmation, lust, and love in a voice that he had only ever heard speaking sins.

 

He woken with his cock still hard and his sheets sticky wet.  He’d taken himself in hand and in only a moment had come again to the thought of her voice and her sins.

 

And now, as though his dreaming of her had conjured her, she was in the dark with him again.  His cock began to harden at her first words.

 

Of the vows Ian had taken to become a priest, chastity had been the simplest after poverty.  He had no love of ownership save for a few small mementos of his home and family.  In a similar way, he had always admired and respected women, and in his youth he had even wanted a few, but the temptations of the flesh had never ever been his downfall.

 

 _Never say ‘never ever,’_ the voice in his head whispered.

 

“It’s been a long time since my last confession.  Four months, actually.  I… um… I left school and moved in with my boyfriend.  We… I guess you’d say we were living in sin.  I got a job at the chippy and… well… he was focusing on his music so I was paying the rent and then, one day… well… he’s just up and gone.  No note, nothing.  Found out from a friend that he’d gotten signed on with a record label, got a huge advance, and moved out to the country.  His first album is coming out next summer.  He said he was going to get me out, but he didn’t.  He left me behind.  They always do.”

 

She took a deep breath.  Her voice had broken at the end and she took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

 

“Not everyone leaves you, my child,” Ian said, gently.  “God doesn’t.”

 

 _I haven’t_ , he thought, but didn’t say.   _I never would_.

 

“I detest all my sins…”

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

 

The sound of her voice made his head spin.  He couldn’t help the wash of joy that came when he knew she was near him, but it was met head-on by a wave of shame and illness at himself.  He nearly drowned every time she spoke.

 

He could have traded with Father Stewart for a different confessional schedule, but he could not bear the thought of never hearing her voice again.  God forgive him, but he could not give her up.

 

“I met a man,” she said, into the darkness.

 

“Already?” Ian asked, shocked.  

 

As soon as the word was out of his mouth, he winced.  He’d made it sound as though she were dating a new man every week, though it had been six months since the musician had exited her life, and she’d not mentioned anyone particular since.  There was a friend- someone she’d grown up with- that she occasionally went on dates with, but Ian didn’t think it was serious.  She hadn’t confessed to fornication, at any rate.  He had thought, however, that she wouldn’t be telling him about anyone serious for a long time yet.

 

He’d hoped it, anyway.

 

She was quiet for a long, tense moment, and then she sighed.

 

“You’re right.  It’s too soon.  I… I can’t.  Of course I can’t.  Stupid even to think of it.”

 

Ian cringed.  “No, child.  I’m sorry.  It’s not too soon, I’m sorry I said that.  I just… you’re sure he’s not like… the other one?”

 

She gave a short laugh.  “Couldn’t possibly be more different.  He came to the store while I was working the other day-” she’d quit at the chippy and been hired at one of the department stores in the city after the musician had left her, “-and there was this big load of mannequins being carted through the store to go to the dumpster, and the cart turned over right on top of me and him!  Just covered in the plastic dummies and bad clothes, but he pulled me out like some kind of hero, holding a plastic arm.  Then he makes some kind of terrible joke about the mannequins being ‘ _armless_ , and he grins like… god, he’s got the best smile.”  She stopped for a moment.  “I guess that’s blasphemy, Father, but he does.  He has the most beautiful smile.”

 

Ian’s heart ached at the sound of her voice.

 

“He sounds wonderful, child.”

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

 

Ian was jolted from his thoughts by her voice.  He had been only paying half his attention to anything since the previous night when he’d had a call from his older brother.

 

_“Ian, how are you?”_

_“Jamie?  Goodness, it’s been awhile!  I’m great, brilliant, molto bene!  How are you?”_

_“I have to tell you, I’m fantastic.”_

_“Oh?  That sounds like there might be something specific… is it a girl?”_

_Ian could almost hear the grin on the other end of the phone, and it shone out of his brother’s voice._

_“It is.  I’m in love, Ian.  Madly, desperately, fantastically in love.  I’m going to ask her to marry me.”_

_“That’s… wonderful, Jamie.  More than wonderful.  It’s brilliant!  Tell me about her!”_

_“Her name is Rose.  Rose Tyler.”_

_Ian liked the way the name rolled off the tongue in his brother’s light Northern accent- so different from his own London tones._

_“She’s pretty?” he asked, teasing slightly._

_“She’s spectacular, but there’s more to it than that.  She has this way about her of seeing the best in people.  She thinks I’m a hero.”_

_“You are a hero, Jamie.”_

_“I’ll be a hero for her, yeah.”_

_Ian felt a lightening in his heart at his brother’s words.  Raised by two different women after their father had run out on each of them in turn, Jamie had found Ian after Jamie’s mother had died.  He’d been 18 and off to the army, but had wanted to see his brother and assure him that someone would always watch out for him.  Ian had been 8, crazy about airplanes and time travel, and had thought that Jamie was God incarnate._

_Seven years later, Jamie had been in Afghanistan, Iraq, and North Korea and had come home with a bad limp and a hard eye that he hadn’t had as a younger man.  He’d taken his experience as a field medic and started working at an emergency clinic in one of the dodgier areas of London with regular trips out of the country for years at a time with Doctors Without Borders._

_He couldn’t see himself as a hero though.  Not until Rose Tyler saw him as one._

_“She’s sunshine, Ian, and that’s what I needed.  The only problem is she’s… well… she’s very young.”_

_“How young are we talking here,” Ian said with a smile.  His brother was a bit closer to 40 than 30, and it made him uncomfortable._

_“Nineteen.”_

_Ian nearly blasphemed.  “Jamie, are you sure?”_

_“Sure she’s nineteen?  Yeah, pretty damn.”_

_“You know what I mean.  Can you really be in love with someone that young?”_

_“Don’t see why not.  Seems like most men my age would give their left ball to have a girl that age even look at them twice.”_

_“Don’t be crass,” Ian said, primly._

_“Forgive me, Father,” his brother rejoined, a laugh in his voice._

_It had been a long time since Jamie had laughed so easily, Ian thought.  He would have to agree that his brother was head-over-heels in love with this Rose Tyler, no matter her age._

_It did beg the question, however._

_“And… no offense, Jamie, but… is she in love with you?”_

_He was quiet for a long moment.  “I don’t know, Ian.  Honestly, I don’t.  I tell myself it’s impossible.  Young, pretty thing like her with an old monster like me?  Not possible.  But then… then she holds my hand, or looks at me with those big, brown eyes, or laughs at me, or doesn’t let me get away with anything and then… suddenly… I think she must love me.  Guess I’ll know soon.  I… er… I bought a ring.”_

_Ian sighed.  “Oh Jamie… you’re such a goner!”_

_The brothers laughed for a long time._

_“So… if she says yes… and I know it’s a big ‘if’ but if she does… would you marry us?  She hasn’t got a lot of money, and I don’t think she’s the sort to want a big church wedding but maybe… something small?”_

_“I’d be honoured.”_

 

And so Ian had spent nearly 24 hours considering what he would say at his brother’s wedding.  For the first time in nearly two years, he hadn’t even been thinking of her as he sat in the dark of the confessional waiting to absolve the sins of the masses.

 

He was returned to himself with a thump as she began to confess.

 

“I… er… I… that bloke that I’ve been seeing?  I… we… we slept together.”

 

“Fornication is a sin, child,” Ian said, mildly.  He’d been expecting to hear this for over a month, and was surprised at her restraint, and that of her partner.  The twist in his gut was wholly expected, however.

 

“Yes, Father, I know.  I’m mad for him though.  I’m sure I’m in love with him.  He’s a bit older than me, and my mum says it’s just a short-term thing for him.  A mid-life crisis.  But he’s not that old,” she defended.

 

“You can’t be absolved if you are not properly contrite,” he said, knowing it was useless.  He’d told her the same before, as he’d told dozens of others in the same small darkness.  He would give her penance, and send her out again, and they both knew it.

 

“Of course, Father.”

 

He sighed and shook his head.  His reflected joy for his brother was muted somewhat in disappointment and pain, but not entirely gone and so it was with good humour that he absolved her and sent her on her way.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

 

Ian could feel the blood draining from his face as he heard the voice.  He was hearing the confessions of the bridal couple before the ceremony and the last voice he had ever expected to hear on this day was issuing from the other side of the screen.

 

He’d seen her that day, golden hair and large eyes, and a smile to make a man weak at the knees.  He’d expressed is admiration to Jamie, but he had not yet had a moment to speak to her.

 

He hadn’t heard her voice until now.

 

“Go on, my child,” he croaked.

 

“It’s you!” she cried, much too loud for the confessional.  She quickly lowered her voice.  “You’re Jamie’s brother?”

 

“You’re his fiance,” Ian rejoined, trying to keep the accusation out of his voice.

 

“Oh god,” she blasphemed.  “He’s going to be mortified.  You know way more than you should about our sex life to this point.”

 

It was true.  Her confessions over the last several months had fueled several shameful dreams where he stood in the place of the nameless bloke about whom she confessed.

 

Why had she never named him?

 

Ian ran through the bride’s confession on autopilot, and the groom’s as well.  He felt horrified with himself and deceived by her.  He knew that she had never intended to do so, but he was illogically furious with her for allowing him to think of his brother’s beloved in such a way.

 

For a few poisonous moments, he considered that they didn’t, in fact, love each other.  That it was only a matter of lust and avarice.

 

It couldn’t last long, however.  He had heard them both speak of the other too many times to believe it.  And, when he stood before the pair to bind them together before the eyes of God and men, and he saw the way the pair of them looked at each other, as though the other held all the secrets to joy in the universe, he knew that there was a love that could be written in the stars.

 

And when Jamie took her in his arms to seal their vows with a kiss, Ian knew that he would never hear her confessions in the dark again.

 

~?~?~?~?~

 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…”

  
  


Ian knelt at the feet of Father Stewart and, for the first time since first he had heard her voice in the dark, he sought absolution.

 

“...I detest all my sins because of your just punishment, but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all-good and deserving of all my love.”

 

 


End file.
